In general, business models can involve buying merchandise and services for one price and selling it for another. In the process, sellers can incur spectacular costs marketing to prospective and existing customers, leasing stores, paying employees, buying and maintaining information technology, transporting, and, most importantly, buying and managing the merchandise itself.
Planning, at one level, is a strategic activity. Executives set business objectives and merchandise planners derive strategies to meet them: back to basics to reduce the style count, extended assortments with additional colors and styles, or new lines of business such as health & beauty. On another level, planning is tactical and operational. The plan influences how many styles and colors a merchant will carry. It influences how distributions are planned for stores. It influences when markdowns are expected to be taken for each style and color. It also influences which stores should carry each style.
One of the most important processes of such planning is assortment planning. Assortment planning provides answers to basic questions such as: Which product or service? How much of it? What colors? What sizes? What locations? Who is the target customer? When should it be offered? How long should it be offered? and so forth. Thus, the old adage, the right product, at the right place, at the right time, still holds true in today's marketplace, but with one important change. Sellers—whether traditional brick-and-mortar, e-commerce or a combination of the two—must have a compelling selection of merchandise for the right customer as well. Thus, an effective assortment planning process that provides the right products and services at the right locations at the right time is essential for successful modern business operation.
An effective assortment planning process is ever more necessary in retail environments and particularly in fashion retail environments. Retail environments and fashion retail environments often require that the business adjust to relatively fickle needs of the consumer.
Although assortment planning directly affects product selection, price, timing and micro-merchandising, it has often been de-emphasized due to hectic retail schedules. Extinguishing delivery fires and meeting marketing and financial planning obligations use valuable time, forcing companies to take the easy approach to merchandising: repeating assortment breadth and depth from previous seasons, creating store assortments based on store volume, and ranking items by sales volume alone.
Yet, to attract the right customer in today's increasingly competitive environment, assortment planning must focus on creating appropriate product breadth and depth of products based on the customer's desires and shopping patterns, taking into account lifestyles, climates, trends and more. Furthermore, assortment planning must present a compelling mix of products to illustrate the company's strategic vision.
In view of the foregoing, it would be beneficial to provide a method and system that provides efficient implementation of assortment planning decisions for merchandise. Moreover, it would be beneficial to provide a method and system that allows for more flexible assignments of products and stores to assortments.